On Friday, I showed up for school and Cedric, a fourth grader that I sponsor, came running up to me and said that he had something for me. He set his book bag down and rifled through it. A second later, he pulled out a quart size bag of cherries! I didn't know Haiti had cherries. They were a little different than normal cherries. They are the same size, but have a slightly different shape. They're not perfectly round. More like an apple in shape, but small as a normal cherry. Also, they don't have seeds like a bing cherry. These have three seeds in the middle that are a little strange looking. They taste like regular cherries...the tart ones. I don't remember what they are called, but we had those on my dad's farm. I remember quite well. That's the tree I was in when my brother shot me with a bb gun right in the butt. Well, he hit my thigh, but it was pretty close to my butt. I have attached a picture of the bag of cherries. All of my students told me to make juice out of them, so I smashed them down and squeezed the juice into a cup. I didn't get quite a cup, but it was very good. I also ate the smashed up cherries. I was wishing that my brother was here because we both love cherries. We used to go to our grandma's basement and pull out a Cool Whip container full of frozen tart cherries. We wouldn't stop eating them until the container was empty and our fingers were red and frozen.
A New Bridge!
Other than this, we did have a bit of a wreck outside of our house. There is an alley that goes along the front of our house. I wouldn't call it a road because it isn't quite wide enough for most cars. People do try though. Everyone tries! We know, because the street narrows just outside of our house and those not big enough fall into the "stream" that runs along our house. This "stream" is nothing of a real stream. it's basically waste water. Any water from washing clothes, showers, or dishes goes into that stream. We have a septic tank, however, our washing machine goes into this stream and contributes to the flow. As I mentioned, it runs along our house...along our outer wall. So, to get to the street, we open our gate and walk over a mini concrete bridge. The problem is that whenever someone falls into the creek, they destroy our bridge. We first had a step. This was here for years. You would simply step over the small stream and onto the step directly in front of the gate. It was simple...until a large water truck came down the street and slid into the stream. It smashed up against our wall and my roommate, who was home at the time, couldn't get out of the gate, so someone brought a ladder to him so he could climb over the concrete wall. Earlier this school year, in October, a group from my church came to visit. They had poured a rectangle slab and reinforced it with rebar. They didn't have time to finish installing it though. So, we had a slab inside our gate, but we needed a good foundation to put it on. After a few months, Ermilien, a friend, and I picked it up and set it over the creek. It wasn't the best, but worked fine.
I was concerned that if a truck drove over it, it might break up as it was not concreted to a good foundation. Well, a few weeks ago, I heard a bunch of racket outside around 10PM. Sure enough, a Nissan truck fell into the stream and was up against our wall. They had crushed our bridge. We were now back to stepping over the creek.
I had woken up Saturday morning and was drinking some coffee when I heard the door. Roger was outside and needed to plug in an extension chord. He was here to construct a new bridge. I was happy to see him because I knew he would do it right. He needed power because he was going to drill four holes into the foundation right against the gate. He was working with Ermilien. Ermilien had dug down about three feet into the ground on the other side of the stream where they were going to pour a deep slab of concrete. This was also reinforced with rebar. He had forms for the concrete precut and was ready to go. I went out to help a little and after about three hours it was finished! Below is our new bridge. I am not going to say it's indestructible, but it should be able to handle the weight of any truck. Where the slab meets the alley, it goes down about three feet into the ground. I think we should be ok!
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